Karl Rove, the President’s top political strategist and considered the architect of his victory in 2004, alerted Bush that the House was lost at around 11 pm, the White House said. “His reaction was, he was disappointed in the results in the House,” Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman.

Democrats celebrated the results in a raucous rally at a victory party in Washington. “The American people have sent a resounding and unmistakable message of change and a new direction for America,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who led his party’s campaign this fall in the House.

By any measure, the result was a sobering defeat for a White House and a political party that had just two years ago, with Bush’s re-election, claimed a mandate to shape both foreign and domestic policy and set out to establish long-term dominance for the Republican Party. To the end, Rove had expressed public confidence that the electoral tools he had used to great effect in his long association with Bush — a sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort, an aggressive effort to define Democratic candidates in unflattering ways, a calculated and intense campaign to fuel the enthusiasm of conservative voters — would save the Republicans from defeat.

In light of the defeat, Bush’s aides were striking a more conciliatory tone as they faced the prospect of two years of divided government and a clearly enlivened Democratic Party. “We always recognized this was going to be a very challenging year,” Ken Mehlman, the Republican Party chairman, said on CNN. “We have to continue to work and try to work on a bipartisan basis to accomplish things.”

... contd.